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Pancho Villa La Revolución No Ha Terminado review
:. Director: Francesco Taboada Tabone
:. Genre: Documentary
:. Running Time: 1:30
:. Year: 2006
:. Country: USA
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As I was sitting in a small room for the screening of Pancho Villa, La Revolución no ha terminado at the Los Angeles Latino Film Festival, I couldn't help but have a strange feeling of déjà vu while watching this succession of interviews of ripped-Mexican elders whose ages range from 90 to 105. But at the end of the projection, when director Francesco Taboada Tabone came on stage holding a DVD of The Last Zapatistas, everything became clear. I wasn't in some kind Lynchian twilight zone after all, but simply watching a remake of his superfluous previous documentary, this time substituting Pancho Villa for Emiliano Zapata.
After watching Tabone's 2works, I'm still not sure of what he's trying to do and he might not know himself. Both films are built on interviews with — mostly — ex-soldiers who pose in uniform in front of their houses and share their memories with us — or at least try to as we're told that some of them have forgotten almost everything while others make up stories.
Having assimilated the Buena Vista Social Club formula, the filmmaker knows that old guys have some kind of cuteness factor onscreen and his films offer entertaining — but useless — galleries of portraits which convey anecdotes rather than facts.
If you're expecting any kind of story, or a glimpse at history, there is none here. Tabone works like a propagandist filmmaker, mostly aiming at reinforcing the legend rather than trying to give us a fair portrait. His vision is not only biased, but he builds his message on inaccurate memories — if not outright lies. While staging interviews with old guys posing in uniform is supposed to officiate as some kind of historical testimonial, we are instead left with a succession of redundant statements such as "he was a great man" and only one negative opinion, which is as close to balanced information as the Fox News channel claims to be.
But the worst thing about Pancho Villa, La Revolución no ha terminado, is that by the end of the 90mn, I — as a Euro Gabacho — still had no clue about who Pancho Villa really was and what he had concretely achieved, besides being some kind of Mexican Robin Hood with a sombrero who killed many people and had kids with several women.
Fred Thom
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